Politics As Usual
Shining a Light on Power and Policy
Tom Shine covers congressional politics for ABC News.
RECENT POSTS
- "The Stories Are Shocking In Their Simplicity And Brutality..."
- "Pipes Have Voltage, Get Shocked In The Shower"
- She May Have to Take the Stand "For Mommy" a Second Time
- The Army Calls A Reverse And Orders Football Star Caleb Campbell To Serve
- "I Have Broken The Cycle Of Obesity..."
- "When I Joined the Navy, I Didn’t Know I Was Gay"
- You Might Not Be Able To Afford The Groceries, But Your Shopping Cart Will Be Clean
- For the Petersons 'The Price is Right'
- 8,763 DISABLED VETS DIED BEFORE THEIR CASES WERE REVIEWED
- HOLY PATRICK LEAHY, BATMAN!
MONTHLY ARCHIVES
« Previous | Main | Next »
'Defrauding Medicare is Easy and Safe'
April 21, 2008 7:47 AM
An article in Sunday's PARADE magazine says " a whopping $70 BILLION out of an estimated $400 BILLION budgeted for Medicare in 2008 may disappear this year due to fraud and mismanagement." PARADE says that is equivalent to $233 for EVERY AMERICAN. Harvard professor Malcolm Sparrow, who studies Medicare fraud, told the Sunday insert that "defrauding Medicare is EASY and SAFE, the SPENDING is HUGE, the SPENDING on CONTROLS is MINIMAL and the bills are paid and processed by COMPUTERS and no human sees them."
PARADE says recent examples of fraud include $5 MILLION spent on a SINGLE WHEELCHAIR because of repeat invoicing and $170 MILLION billed by one firm for FAKE HIV DRUG INFUSIONS. Kimberly Brandt of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid services told PARADE that they have stopped $2 BILLION in improper payments in the last two years. She says 1.2 BILLION claims are processed each year and adds, "we can't look at all of them."
April 21, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1)
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Rick
Try the fact that this posting from ABC should make people think twice about the difficulties (especially right now with the economy) with instituting a massive bureaucracy to oversee healthcare.
It's about cost. and only one candidate is focused on that.
Massive bureaucracies do not bring down cost...especially when costs have to do with billing, staff shortages and out of control redundancy in lawsuits aimed at punishing docs and hospitals but only hit the insurance companies who in turn pass that on to the general medical field and thus to consumers.
People with money and good healthcare don't realize what a massive overhaul would do in the enxt twod ecades.
Posted by: dl | Apr 21, 2008 10:53:17 AM
Post a comment
